


Real

by Sirca



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-14
Updated: 2017-06-14
Packaged: 2018-11-14 04:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11200860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sirca/pseuds/Sirca
Summary: Solas wins in the end. He doesn't expect Lavellan to come back.





	Real

**Author's Note:**

> Any mistakes made here are my own.

When the veil drops, when the world ends, when all the work that has been done crumbles, Solas is there. She is there too, his vhenan, still trying desperately to change his course. She screams, reaches out with the one hand that he hasn't destroyed. There's a gut-wrenching sensation he will always remember, to see her like this, to watch her be stripped of flesh and bone before caving into nothing more than dust. Then, with a flash of green, it's over.

The mountains crumble before falling into the tempestuous sea. The forests wither and turn white as they're leeched of all life. The winds howl with rage at the sharp, sudden changes before dying like everything else. Confusion, panic, all these things give way to a silence to compete with the quietest of funerary rights. 

It's over. He has completed his task. And he weeps.

He weeps for those he has outlived. For those he has failed. For those who were trapped in an in-between state of neither living nor dead. They will have the hardest time adjusting to this new world, wailing like lost newborns into the sill air. Solas joins them as he mourns the loss. It is necessary, but that doesn't mean that he feels nothing.

He weeps. But then, he stands as shaky as a newborn fawn before taking his first steps into the world he has shaped, destroyed, and remade. 

It is empty at first, but things too clever and lucky for their own good stir and life begins anew. Solas is among them, guiding from the shadows as he has for some time now. A careful word here, the pulling of a thread there, and the People return. 

Cities do not spring up overnight. It takes time, the thing he has in abundance, as stones are stacked and magic is weaved into them. Ten, twenty, thirty years pass. Then thirty more. Life is slow to cultivate but it comes along with every changing season. 

He walks among them, neither revealing himself or the price he paid for their happiness. They treat him as they would their friend, their neighbor, and offer him food, drink, a song spinning tales of their glorious existence. Solas finds, one day, he doesn't feel quite as hollow listening to them anymore. His wounds may never fully close, but they lessen.

Until he sees her again. His vhenan. Dancing in the square in flowing skirts with wild, reckless abandon. She sings too loud, just a little off key, but doesn't seem to care. Neither do her fellow elves. He finds himself staring, leaning heavily on his staff, shaken to his core. She catches his gaze and grins.

When the music ends and she breezes past, he finds his tongue heavy with all he wishes to say to her. Instead, he asks, “Are you real?”

She laughs (a familiar, sweet sound he remembers coaxing from her on more than one occasion, her hair fanned across his chest as she'd sweetly kiss the line of his jaw). But she doesn't stop. Doesn't answer. She keeps her steps in beat with the song and is lost to cloth and revelry. 

Days pass and Solas believes he is finally losing his grip on his sanity. He's taken much from himself, destroyed, lied and murdered those he claimed to care about. Every bit of it settles on his shoulders like a death shroud, threatening to envelop him and swallow him whole. He's surprised when he rises each morning to see he still breathes. 

Then, days turn to weeks and weeks to months and he is convinced he never saw her at all. She is just a lingering memory in his broken heart.

Until, of course, he sees her again. This time in the gardens.

She's spread a blanket out and lounges on it with her companions. The tips of her fingers are stained red from the berries she pops into her mouth between laughter at some joke that he's too far away to hear. She shifts in her gauzy clothing as the other elves rise to dash for the pond. His vhenan laughs so hard that tears stream down her face when they dunk one another. 

He approaches then, cautious, careful, like a hungry hound begging for scraps. Her smile doesn't fade when she sees him, and Solas thinks of all the useless tales he heard from the world before of demons. If she wishes to tempt him only to lead to his own destruction, well...

He would gladly follow her.

“Are you real?” Solas asks again.

She wipes her eyes on the back of her sleeve. Then, she picks up another berry. “As real as you are. Care for one?”

He takes it from her reddened fingers and it stains his hand as well, no more than he already has done himself, however. He eats it and it tastes sickeningly sweet.

Her friends approach once more, dripping wet and shaking water over one another as he retreats. Her grin fades, and she watches him with the same solemn expression he'd come to expect. When she pursued him through their dreams, she wore that look. There's a pang in his chest when he turns away.

Days, weeks, months blur together. The People thrive as they never have before. No chafing yolks of the Evanuris. No humans to subjugate and steal from them. Everything is as it should be.

Except for his vhenan. He sees her again, on the street, a finely woven basket in the crook of her arm as she chooses flowers from an outdoor shopkeeper. She weaves one of them into her braid to the delight of the elf attempting to sell to her. Before long, the basket dips heavily with the weight of beautifully colored flowers. 

This time, she stops when she passes him on the street, turning just so that he's cornered. She takes a deep breath, “My turn to ask. Are you real?”

It catches him off guard that he immediately stand straighter, to where he can't keep the sureness of it out of his voice. “Of course I am.”

“You weren't so sure about me,” she laughs as if he's been playing a joke on her. It fades, gradually, before she hands him a large, purple flower with a long stem. It reminds him of what grew in the fields of the Hinterlands when they were still there. “Here, for you, so you'll remember that I'm real next time.”

When his vhenan brushes past him, he resists every urge that tells him to stop her. To fall at her feet and beg forgiveness for what he has done. The moment passes and she's down the street and around the corner. He watches her go, flower stem crushed in his grip. 

Days and months and years. The flower withers and he remembers. She was real.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been years and I'm still mad and sad. Alternate universes are cathartic.


End file.
